I also struggled with the "bicameral" definition. The best I could come up with is that because e.g. Scheme represents code and and data in the same way (isn't

I also struggled with the "bicameral" definition. The best I could come up with is that because e.g. Scheme represents code and and data in the same way (isn't there a word for this?) it's possible to represent and manipulate (semantically) invalid code. This is because the semantics are done in the other "chamber". The example given was `(lambda 1)` which is a perfectly good sexp, but will error if you eval it. This could be contrasted with C where code (maybe more precisely program logic) is opaque (modulo preprocessor) and can only be represented by function pointers (unless you're doing shellcode). Here the chamber that does the parsing from text (if we don't look inside GCC) also does semantic "checking" and so while valid functions can be represented within C (via the memory contents at the function pointer), the unchecked AST or some partial program is not represented. I've tried not to give too many parentheticals above, but I'm not sure the concept holds water if you play tricks. Any Turing machine can represent any program, presumably in a way that admits cutting it up into atoms and rearranging to an arbitrary (potentially invalid) form. I'd be surprised if this hasn't been discussed in more detail somewhere in the literature. This